It may be a little short on originality, but all in all, it’s fun enough that it’s pretty easy to overlook that.
If you just focus on the fun and the joy of movement, there’s definitely something in Neon Tail worth experiencing. It may not be a GOTY contender, but as I said, if you like JSR and its ilk, you’ll want to check this out – just make sure you don’t get bogged down in its tutorial first.
The Switch has plenty of fishing games on offer, so there’s no need to waste your time with one as frustrating and dull as Pocket Fishing.
Before we get the rush of “Ultra Deluxe Summertime Fun Editions” that are surely in its future, I’ll say that golf fans could do a lot worse than checking Golfinite out.
It’s too bad that the platforming can’t also be described as near-perfect, since that would’ve made The Cub a must-play. As it stands, it’s a surprisingly appropriate sequel to a game that wouldn’t have seemed like it needed one, and if you want more of that apocalyptic Earth, you won’t regret revisiting it here.
You could quibble about how little Train Traffic Manager differs from Urban Flow, but that would be missing the point of the game. Like any good puzzler, Train Traffic Manager is easily approachable, and it knows how to sink its hooks into you quickly.
If you want to turn your brain off and play a game in the background while you’re doing something else that requires more of your attention, I could see why you might be interested in My Little Universe. It’s a game that seems tailor-made for turning on and ignoring it even as you play, like a slightly more demanding clicker game.
Everything in Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2 comes back to how much you like Smash Bros., and how much you want to play a game that’s similar to it but ever-so-slightly different. If your answers to both of those questions is “a lot”, then you’re definitely going to want to check this one out.
DreamWorks All-Star Kart Racing is still a decent racer overall. Much like the studio that inspired it, it’s not going to make you forget the genre’s king, but there’s fun to be found here if you give it a chance.
Ad Infinitum very much feels like the kind of horror game that would’ve come out five or ten years ago: lots of slow-moving stealth and light puzzles, with a heavy dose of walking simulator-style exploration on the side.
It’s an enjoyably challenging platformer that’s sure to scratch any Mega Man or roguelike itches you have. Factor in Maker Mode, and you’ve got a recipe for a platformer that’s a huge – and hugely fun – time sink.
Tenebris Pictura is part-puzzle game, part-beat-’em-up, and the two halves never come together in a way that’s remotely fun.
Sephonie is one of those games that’s absolutely bursting with ideas. Its Steam page called the game a “Tony-Hawk-esque 3D platformer”, it’s got lengthy dialogue sequences that are basically just philosophical musings, and one of the core parts of the game is cataloguing all the flora and fauna of an underground cave network – which you do via minigames that look like Tetris reimagined as a match-3 puzzle. Unfortunately, it also doesn’t have any notion of how to turn those ideas into a particularly interesting game.
Tiny Thor is an excellent love letter to retro games not just because it looks and plays like a game from decades ago, but because it’s still highly playable in the here and now.
That’s the kind of game Patrick's Parabox is: it worms its way into your brain and sticks there, and if you’re a fan of deceptively simple puzzle games, you owe it to yourself to check this one out.
I could see playing through Scarf once if you’re in the mood to play something that reminds you of Journey, but that isn’t as good as Journey. But beyond that? Scarf throws away whatever goodwill it might generate with an ending that shows it doesn’t really respect your time. Make of that what you will, and decide whether that makes the game worth your time at all.
That’s the best way to describe Nocturnal: it’s a neat game. It won’t take too much of your time, and it’s similar enough to other metroidvanias that you’ll probably only want to play it if you’re already a fan of the genre, but if you like the genre and want something that has enough spark of inspiration to carry it through a few hours, it’s definitely worth investigating.
The bottom line is that both Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris and Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light are good games, regardless of whether you’re playing solo or (locally) with a friend. They were a breath of fresh air for the series when they first released a decade ago, and The Lara Croft Collection is a great opportunity to discover them, whether it’s anew or for the first time.
Soccer Story could’ve been a lot of fun, as other games like Golf Story and Sports Story (both from an entirely different developer, I’ll note) have demonstrated. Instead, it just leaves a lot to be desired.
It’s not often that a game’s composer tells you most of what you need to know about a game, but in the case of Nightmare Reaper, it does. See, the music here was created by Andrew Hulshult, who has previously worked on games like Doom Eternal, Quake Champions, Dusk, and Prodeus. If you’re looking for a list of games to which Nightmare Reaper could be compared, that’s a pretty good place to start.